Church and State, Christians and Politics: Theology in Action

Levi Hightree: welcome to theology in action my name is levi hightree i work here at verse by verse fellowship with our senior pastor dr tony caffey today we're going to focus on the topic of politics and as we talk we'll probably narrow it down into some some more hot button issues maybe in this specific time but we'll start out a little bit more broadly so my my question initially to you would be what do you think the balance between being too invested in the political realm of this world is as opposed to being too cut off from that aspect of this world it's a tricky issue isn't it in our day because we have probably friends who are way too invested in the political world and yet we're not uh pacifists either like the amish who live you know disconnected from the world that's a perfectly respectable theological position but it's not my position there we are called to live in our world to be influencers in our world and politics is part of that so i think what we want to do is we want to see the government as a good thing that god has given us there's scriptures that speak to that and you know we don't want anarchy we don't want no government or no politics but politics like other things in our world are impacted by the fall so there's negative political uh philosophies that are out there that are hurtful and that are not christian not god-fearing and to the extent that we can as christians we want to to impact them positively so there's a lot to unpack there but i would just say you know what we want to avoid is the extreme of a pacifism that would cut ourselves off from our culture and from politics and government and we want to avoid the extreme as well of being so invested in politics that we let the tail wag the dog so to speak and we're not staying anchored to our faith and to our lord that's maybe a mediating position between those two so how would you suggest or pastor or some coach someone that might be leaning maybe we'll say the perspective too political first how would you bring them back to that more balance

Dr. Tony Caffey: well i guess it depends on what they're doing if they're a senator for the state of texas that's one thing that's their vocation but i think what you're getting at is maybe somebody who is obsessively uh following and uh attracted to political engagement maybe in a way that drifts too far from their christian convictions is that kind of what you're getting at there

Levi Hightree: yeah i i mean that's a danger for all of us and it's not just politics it can be sports you know i've had my affections gravitate towards sports to a place that was negative and i had i was convicted about it so i i think one just if i can speak practically for a moment you know we want to anchor our days and our time and our energy in the lord and in the scriptures and so what i would encourage people to do if i'm coaching is find the the best part of your day the the part of the day that you're the freshest that you're the most engaged for me that's morning as i'm a morning person and and you know spend time with the lord spend time in prayer spend time in his word and let that set the tone for everything else that you do your vocational work whether you're an engineer or a teacher or a pastor your interests whether that be sports or politics or or even the investment with your children and what you're doing with them and let let your time with the lord color and and set the tone for everything else that you do so that you know when there is uh conversational engagement with politics or when you are you know getting up to date with what's going on in the news all of that's being filtered through your your anchorage in the lord and just some bad habits that can develop over time you know we've you know i can go home from a long day at work and spend six hours at night watching tv or watching sports or some people maybe if they have a political uh bent you know they're spending six hours a night watching fox news or cnn i don't think that's the best use of your time and can really break down that tone that you're trying to set with time in the lord and it can become an obsession so that's just maybe some some things to watch so that your your heart is not uh overindulgent with these interests and letting again the tail wag the dog you want your your heart to be centered on the lord on his word and let that inform the way that you're engaged politically with these things let's flip the coin over let's look at the other side if you if you feel someone is

Dr. Tony Caffey: too far removed from that

Levi Hightree: yeah what would how would you guide that

Dr. Tony Caffey: so i'm an american so i'll speak as an american we don't live in the roman empire but even in the roman empire there were certain biblical standards that paul gives us and peter gives us and you know we live in a government and and what's amazing about america is we have this constitutional democracy this republic that's amazing we can influence and we can vote and we can uh have a role in the public sphere uh for things like policy for things that even have you know a moral impact upon our community so let's let's just go straight to the most hot button topic you know let's go to abortion you know that's something that's certainly divisive in our country but we as christians have convictions about these matters we see a paradigm in scripture that says that um you know life starts at conception and not at birth and so we can advocate in a way that protects lives and and honors the lord and implements god-fearing policies in our country to the extent that we can do that we should and we should pray for that we should pray for our political leaders to uh pursue that and we can even celebrate the most recent things that have happened in our country in terms of the reversal of roe versus wade i praise god for that and i know that christians uh have spent a lot of time praying and and advocating and and uh pursuing that and and praise god that's that's something that uh we've been able to to accomplish that we couldn't if we were totally disengaged or if we were kind of adopting a pacifistic approach that removed us completely from political engagement

Levi Hightree: yeah you brought up uh roe versus white abortion and that kind of brings up an interesting thought say as a fellow christian if there is something voted into law that i disagree with yeah what do i what i would on the broad term we might dial that in a little more but on the broad term what do i what do i do with that if i just disagree with it

Dr. Tony Caffey: well that's going to always happen i think in our in the world that we live in um and there's no perfect government i think winston churchill said that democracy is the worst form of government in the world except for all the rest you know there's it's just a part of our broken world right now that um you know 50 years ago the fight was uh for abortion against abortion and for abortion on the other side and some of the uh sexuality and marriage issues weren't even a matter of consideration now it's totally flipped so that our generation is dealing with a new set of circumstances and seeing some some victories but also seeing you know our christian worldview worldview being um you know uh battled against by by our government and some political authorities right now so i think most practically we have to be uh prayer warriors in terms of what uh you know first timothy two talks about in terms of praying for our governments for those who are in authority and uh we need to be also uh informed about what's happening in our world and not just you know hiding under a rock or pretending like these things aren't really taking place we can um we can be intelligent hopefully communicators and dialogue partners for explaining why we hold to the things that we do in terms of marriage in terms of sexuality in terms of um you know the sanctity of human life and other matters as well so uh and then that takes some work and that that's i think to go back to your previous question that can be absorbing that can be kind of overwhelming and so we have to be careful not to let that absorb so much of our time that we we uh lose our anchorage in the lord and then also in the specific things that he's called us to do you know for so invested in politics that we forget our family that's not good if we're so invested in in political engagement that we're not invested in our local churches and discipling uh saints within the church then that's a that's a fail so good balance between those is healthy for the Christian

Levi Hightree: seems like a relatively simple question but it it it's on my mind to ask why is it important to keep that healthy balance

Dr. Tony Caffey: you know augustine would talk about the nature of our loves and having them properly ordered so uh we have our love for the lord and then we have our the love for our spouse our family and then we have the love for our vocation and our work and you might add to that our love for our country and having that properly ordered is correct but when you love your wife or your children more than you love god everything's out of order and you become compromised or if your your love for your country is greater than your love for your your church community or your family or your your your lord then that breaks down as well uh you know the your spiritual health so having having your world properly ordered where you prioritize the lord and second to that you're you're prioritizing your family third to that you're prioritizing your vocation and your church and your involvement there and then below that is your country as well your love for the country uh keeping things in balance in the proper order and knowing what's uh should have the most focus over the other things is is important to your spiritual health so and that that takes constant you know analysis and and you might need some feedbacks from some friends who would say you know what you're just a little too amped up about what's going on politically right now maybe you should dial that down and focus more on your investment in the church and your investment in your family um that i've had friends who've had to talk to me and have tough conversations about that from time to time when things get out of order

Levi Hightree: would you say there is a line that a christian needs to draw in the sand of things being voted into office that might push up against their christianity or their moral compass and beliefs where they need to draw the line in the sand and if so where would that line be

Dr. Tony Caffey: yeah that's a good question i you know i run across this all the time as a pastor because you're preaching and the accusation will come are you politicizing the pulpit if you're preaching against abortion or if you're preaching against you know homosexual marriage which was a was a big issue five years ago still continues to be so my argument would be i'll just speak from a preacher's perspective you know these are uh moral issues before their political issues so people will you know fault the church for preaching what they consider to be politics well before those things are politics their moral issues the sanctity of of human life is is a biblical issue so and i'm not looking to preach on an abortion every week because you know the bible doesn't only speak to that issue but where it comes up if you're preaching through the ten commandments if you're you know preaching through uh let's say romans one and this spiral down downwards where you have increasing levels of of depravity uh manifesting themselves in our country i mean if you're preaching through romans and you don't address homosexuality in romans 1 you're just being unfaithful to your task so i think properly in context dealing with those things not letting them become obsessions or the only things that you address but but not falling into the trap too of of you know people saying oh you're you're just dealing with political issues you're just addressing hot button issues that's you know i i refuse to to fall into that trap or to be labeled that way because those are moral issues and and as a christian i want to advocate for those things that are pleasing to the lord and advocate for those things that i believe too are best for human flourishing it's best for for humanity for us to not abort babies in the womb and for us to not advocate for homosexual marriage and also you know the other issues as they come up that uh maybe are less hot button but still have an impact upon our culture and our world so yeah there's there's again to go back to what i said earlier you know some people are going to be more invested in this because that'll be their work or they'll you know if they're a senator for the state of texas or um somebody who's invested in politics they've got to eat sleep and drink these things uh more so than we do who maybe aren't as as involved in that vocationally but but still you know having having your affections ordered rightly having god is kind of the central um uh conscious the thing that's informing your conscience more than anything else is is important that'll help you to navigate some of these other spaces where where we need god's input on how we think on these other matters

Levi Hightree: we've touched on it a few times how what is your biblical stance on abortion how do you defend your stance on that

Dr. Tony Caffey: yeah well it's it's pretty easy actually when you look at scripture you know i've heard different christians say things like well abortion's a a tricky issue or a complicated issue for a christian it's not really at all uh we have passages in the old testament that speak about being knit together in our mother's womb psalm 139 jeremiah talked about that in jeremiah 1. um you know job talks about that even that the pre-birth person is indeed a person not a lump of cells or or anything like that and um and so the defense of the unborn is really basically the the you know the ten commandments in action thou shall not murder if this isn't indeed a person which i believe it is in the womb a pre-born person then why would you advocate for or tolerate or vote for if it ever comes down to voting an action that would endorse murder it's pretty clear-cut to me

Levi Hightree: another big hot button issue going on in the world and it's primarily i suppose in america uh at this point in time is gun control laws yeah you hear a lot of conversation about well if they vote that i'm not allowed to keep this gun they aren't allowed to take that on a christian perspective are we to obey the law there the i hear some people defend that by saying well if they take that step then they're going to start infringing on our christian beliefs and that i have to stand on so kind of how do we navigate that

Dr. Tony Caffey: yeah that's definitely more of a gray area there's no you know thou shalt own guns and shalt not own guns in the old testament or in the new testament we do have i think patterns of of the way in which god wants to operate in this world the legal illegal thing in america is basically derived from our constitution we do have a constitutional right to bear arms and that's significant that historically that was significant because uh there was a certain amount of freedom and responsibility that was given to us as citizens to to be law abiding members of of our our government in that gray space i think we need to be cautious as christians by to come down too hard or too strong one way or another

Levi Hightree: would you say that our innate duty biblically there would be to obey the law first if they were to vote them of their illegal just taking it to the extreme of all guns are illegal our responsibility as a christian is to obey that law even if we don't like it

Dr. Tony Caffey: yeah absolutely and and i you know i would have a guilty conscience at that point and protecting my innocent conscience is really really important to me so i i mean my wife is from a country that has strong gun control regulations and if i chose to live there i would have to abide by that policy and um you know i don't see that happening anytime soon in america there's uh it's pretty hard to overturn a constitutional precedent but you know we'll cross that bridge when we get there

Levi Hightree: kind of piggybacking off of that thought in that in that vein what is a christian's role in as far as submitting to government and where is there a point that that does stop

Dr. Tony Caffey: sure so we have romans 13 which is you know just stop and read it sometime you just think like wow paul called the church in that day with a very evil roman emperor at that time he called the church to submit to the extent that they can and even talked about the the the capital punishment that's administered by that governmental entity i mean it's pretty it's pretty stark for us uh as americans you know 2 000 years removed from that so i mean we do need to cross cultures so we don't live in a roman emperor empire we don't have a roman emperor we have a a constitution we have a republic we have a democratic process here which is different so we are the people of the united states of america so i think we still are called to obey to the extent that it doesn't violate our christian convictions or christian you know injunctions um so and even in the first century world you know peter and john would say we must obey god and not men when the jewish leaders told them to stop proselytizing they're like sorry we can't do that so that that is true in our day as well there are times where we've got to say as christians no we must obey god not men not our government authorities there are times when children if they're being asked by their parents to do something that's immoral we'll say we must obey god and not men even though we want to submit to your authority same with a wife to her husband or an employee to an employer we can still value the the structures that god has put in place governments families churches while at the same time when when the rubber meets the road of of something that's violated in terms of god's ultimate command for us we can say respectfully no government entity you're telling us that we have to do such and such but god has told me to do this and so i'm going to do this and this i mean this is not strictly hypothetical we dealt with this didn't we when we went through the covid era and we had churches shut down um initially as we saw this this influx of of covet 19 something very scary we saw the government act in our best interests or so they thought so we thought for us to not meet to not spread the virus uh that precedent was part of even historically uh the church you know during world war ii and in times where churches couldn't meet because it was a threat to the people who were meeting but then we do have this command in hebrews to meet to not forsake the gathering of the believers and so that's where there was this rub and i think the way that i navigated that and we as elders had to discern that is we're trying to respect the government as best we can we're trying to honor them but if their expectation of us gets to a place where where our conscience is pricked and we're not able to do what god has called us to do we must obey god rather than men and there there were some times where we actually met technically illegally because we saw that as the the lesser of two evils you might say disobeying the government versus disobeying god which is something that bonhoeffer would write about you know which is the worst thing to disobey the government or to disobey god and and we want to obey god or disobey the government would be the lesser of those two eagles evils another way to frame it is to think of it as what's what's the greater good what's the greater of two goods it's good to obey the government that's good but it's even gooder can i say that better to obey god and so obeying the government would be good but we want to do the the greater of the two goods which is obey god so when those situations come and there's rub thinking that through and you know being on the side of the lord versus the government if it does come to that is what we've got to choose and there's a lot of issues involved in that i know and and maybe sometimes people have a conscience that's overly sensitive in ways that it doesn't need to be and so we need to go back to the scriptures to let them inform us to what what is ultimately an injunction from the scripture and instead of just maybe an implication that we're deriving from scripture that takes time that takes tim takes energy that takes study so

Levi Hightree: yeah so we've covered a lot uh today on in the realm of political and a lot of heavy heady thought processing things what are some if you if you could dial this into some practical steps and here's how you put it into play in your life give them to us

Dr. Tony Caffey: i love talking practically you bet and the charles spurgeon would say this i think spurgeon said this but you know whenever pastors backed into a corner they just kind of say spurgeon said such and such so if it wasn't spurgeon then it was somebody um he talked about you know having the bible in one hand and having the newspaper in the other hand and being conversant and able to exegete both the scriptures and your own culture and i think that's wise so that we can you know be ambassadors for christ in our community so practically how this works for me is is setting the tone of my day in god's word spending time with the lord spending time in prayer for myself my own family my own church my own country and then on top of that what i like to do is just listen to a few selective podcasts that help me stay informed with what's going on in the world so i listen to al mohler's the briefing i listen to the world and everything in it because i want uh to know what's going on in our world in our world but i want it from a christian perspective because fox news and cnn both are sometimes so sensationalized they're not even helpful um so that that's how i would encourage people to do it is is let your time in the word inform the rest of your day try to find some ways to stay informed but not obsessed with what's going on in the world and then pray pray pray like crazy you know i remember here when run rural verse versus wade got reversed that weekend um i remember al mohler talking about when he was a kid when that first got instituted and his mom that very day when that um you know that supreme court uh ruling got publicized his mom started praying for that 50 years ago for it to be reversed and he spent his whole childhood and all of his adult life praying and advocating against roe vs wade as did his mom and his mom died before it was actually reversed so there's 50 years of prayer that he dedicated him and his mom and countless other americans and we see the benefit of that not that there's not more to be done there's a lot more to be done in regards to that issue but you know that never underestimate the power of prayer and how that can uh have an influence on our political situation on how that can have an influence on you know advocating for the lord as christians so just practically speaking spend time with the lord make that the most important part of your day pray like crazy and then find some other ways to stay informed with what's going on in our world

Levi Hightree: great insight thank you for your time thank you for that insight that's going to be all for today if you guys are interested in this type of content feel free to check out pastor tony at bbvf.org we also do expository teaching which will be there on the website as well as our facebook page we live stream our services every sunday morning and wednesday evening we have teachings then as well if you're interested in content like this in a podcast form maybe you don't have time to be able to sit down and watch a video you like to list while you're doing something else search verse by verse fellowship on pretty much any podcast format we should be there this was theology in action stay tuned for more content like this